The trajectory of humanity’s quest for space dominance is entering a new phase that echoes past endeavours while presenting novel challenges. As nations vie for celestial supremacy, the Space Race 2.0 has already begun, with the Moon emerging as a coveted destination.
While reminiscent of the historic space race of 1957-1990, this modern rivalry is characterized by intricate geopolitical dynamics and advanced technologies. Amidst this cosmic marathon, the spotlight rests on India’s strategic moves to secure its lead over competitors like Russia and assert its role as a cosmic superpower.
Financial Express Online speaks with Samson Williams & George S. Pullen, founders of Milky Way Economy, a Washington, DC based think tank specializing in understanding the economic foundations of the Fifth Industrial Revolution and the Space Economy.
Following are excerpts:
Do you think in the future it is going to lead to a race towards the Moon?
The race to the moon is already on. It’s just a marathon not a sprint, so the real question is “In the great Space Race 2.0, how will India preserve its lead over Russia to win it?”
Overall, the Space Race 2.0 will have eerie similarities and important differences with the first space race 1957-90. Understanding them helps us forecast what humankind’s ambitions and efforts to settle the Moon will look like. First, this new space race isn’t that new. It was during the major opening period of international relations and trade after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and soon after the dissolution of the USSR, with 15 constituent republics gaining full independence from Moscow in 1991, that things also changed for the space industry.
Pardon the space pun, but after the fall of the USSR, it left a “vacuum” in both global power and space power. Next was 1992, and with it, the seven-month Operation Desert Storm, widely seen by space and military historians and strategists as the first war where space capabilities were on display. That same year, the then president of China, Jiang Zemin, approved “Project 921,” which was China’s first plan for a crewed space program within a decade and building a space station by 2020. Remember that 1992 was also when ISRO was under US sanctions, and it accelerated the push to full-stack national space capabilities and the launch of PSLV into SSO with IRS-P2 satellite aboard by 1994, which India then followed with over fifty successful flights.
What is the Second Space Age?
This period after the first space race is sometimes referred to as the “Second Space Age,” and it extends until the Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission, where a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched to the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, in 2020. We were fortunate enough to both be commentators for a live broadcast of Launch America and will always remember the occasion. Only months prior, Space Force had been created in December 2019, and with it and the demonstration of US capabilities to not just bring supplies but also astronauts rapidly and at commercially viable prices to the ISS, Space Race 2.0 kicked into high gear. “Project 921,” almost thirty years old by this point, had helped revolutionize the space program in China. And India’s space program has built upon PSLV and gone on to significant missions like the Mars Orbiter Mission Mangalyaan and the recent Chandrayaan-3’s Moon Mission with its Vikram Lander and Pragyan Rover near the lunar south pole.
… And in the present?
Fifty years plus years of historical Space dates and significant events later, we arrive at today. India has landed on the South Pole of the Moon…And has renamed that region as Shivshakti Point.
In the time-honoured tradition of explorers and especially Europeans colonizers, whoever gets to a place first and claims it gets to name it.
Will the international space community accept that India has the right to rename the parts of the moon it “discovers”?
Britain ruled India for nearly 90 years, renaming it as it saw fit. Now, by divine right and achievement, does India own the southern pole of the Moon? Or at least have the “right” to name it?
The question one should really be asking, “How will India flex its muscle in Space to lay claim to history? And then preserve its rights in Space, the moon, and beyond?” After all, in the 5th Industrial Revolution, that is The Space Economy, a country cannot be a global superpower if it is not a Space Power.
The Space Race has been going on for over 50 years. However, the new question is, “Does India want to be the globe’s hegemon for the 21st Century? Or just play second to America’s self-proclaimed Manifest Destiny in Space? Or do the Artemis Accords offer a window into cooperation in a future Space race that transitions from a marathon into a relay race?” So many unanswered questions. So many possibilities. India is on the pitch on the moon. Will they get a Six or be retired? So many unanswered questions. So many possibilities.